A year later, no sign of Christina Morris

Family and friends have been unrelenting in their search for the Fort Worth woman who disappeared from The Shops at Legacy.

Not knowing takes its toll on Christina Morris’ family with every passing week.

Sunday will mark one year since she went missing from The Shops at Legacy in Plano after a night out with friends.

The 23-year-old Fort Worth woman was spotted on a surveillance video in the early morning hours as she walked with an acquaintance to her car. She never made it.

Police found her silver Toyota Celica parked in the same space days later. No signs of a struggle. No signs of Christina either.

For family and friends, the last year has been an all-consuming search for answers. They have banded together, plastering her photo on social media, posters and billboards. They’ve sold T-shirts, tote bags and other trinkets bearing the same message: #FindChristina.

No new clues have emerged.

Volunteers have joined their quest, combing hundreds of acres for any trace to her whereabouts. And the Plano detectives assigned to the case have tracked dozens of leads.

Still nothing.

The one person who may hold the key is 25-year-old Enrique Arochi, who sits in jail in Collin County charged with aggravated kidnapping in her disappearance. But if he knows more, he isn’t talking.

That hasn’t stopped Team Christina. They picket in front of his parents’ home and protest outside the jail during visiting hours. Giving up is not an option, they say.

Jonni McElroy and Anna Morris both had a hand in raising their daughter, Christina, and won’t give up until she’s found. (G.J. McCarthy/Staff Photographer)

Present-tense memories

What keeps the family going is the hope that Christina is still alive somewhere. The odds are against them, they know. But imagining life without her is even worse.

Their memories are in the present tense. Christina loves the color purple, is crazy about giraffes and has a passion for photography. A skater chick, some would say.

She graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas with a marketing degree in 2013. And while she spent her days doing advertising and spreadsheets for an online dating firm, she worked on the side on a startup clothing line for skateboarders.

She has a smile that lights up her whole face and is known for her so-tight-she-won’t-ever-let-you-go hugs. She constantly surrounds herself with people, preferring to be in a room buzzing with activity than be by herself. Her bond with family is strong.

“I feel helpless, lost,” said her mom, Jonni McElroy, who abandoned her life in Tulsa so she could be in Texas fighting full time for her daughter. “It’s not fair.”

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McElroy moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Plano a few weeks ago. Reminders of her daughter are everywhere, from Christina’s neon sign in the kitchen to her photos on the walls to her skateboard shoes near the couch.

Anna Morris, who has been a second mom to Christina since her parents divorced when she was young, tries to describe the hole in her life this past year. “It’s that feeling of total paralysis, that panic when you can’t put your eyes on your child,” she said.

She still rushes to answer her cellphone when an unfamiliar number pops up, hoping Christina is on the other end.

The reward for information in the case stands at $30,000. But the police tip line has largely gone silent.

In those early days, Anna Morris said, they just kept thinking that there was an easy explanation and that their daughter would turn up wondering what all the fuss was about.

“We kept telling ourselves ‘Don’t overreact,’” she said.

But days turned into weeks, which turned into months.

The suspect

Enrique Arochi

Plano police interviewed Arochi on Sept. 3, the first full day of their investigation, and multiple times after that. Time and again, his statements contradicted the evidence. But more than three months went by before investigators had what they needed to charge him with a crime.

Arochi’s attorney, Keith Gore, did not return calls for comment but has said that his client will plead not guilty. Trial is tentatively set for Nov. 30.

Arochi worked as a manager at a Sprint store in Wylie. He knew Christina from their days at Allen High School, but they had never talked. A mutual friend from high school invited them both out that night to party in Plano.

There was lots of drinking. Arochi told police that before meeting up with the group, he smoked marijuana and took Adderall, a medication prescribed to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but that is often abused.

Police have said they found no evidence of drug use that night. Christina’s family hasn’t ruled it out.

When Arochi decided to head out about 3:30 that morning, Christina said she’d walk with him to the parking garage. The grainy video shows the pair walking side by side into the garage just before 4 a.m. The eight-second video gives no indication that anything’s amiss.

Records show Arochi’s cellphone texted Christina’s boyfriend about drugs at about the same time as the video. Arochi told police that Christina must have borrowed his phone. Hunter Foster never responded. Police confirmed he was in Dallas the night Christina went missing. Foster now sits in jail on unrelated federal drug charges.

Three minutes after the pair disappears from the video, a surveillance camera shows Arochi’s Camaro leaving the garage. Plano police aren’t sure what happened in those three minutes, but they believe Christina was in that car.

At some point, she ended up in the Camaro’s trunk. Forensic tests have confirmed her DNA on the trunk opening and a mat inside.

Arochi has said in media interviews and to police that he doesn’t know what happened to Christina that night.

“They’re very wrong,” he told a TV reporter several weeks before his arrest. “They’re accusing me of something. I’m being threatened. Now they’ve put my name out there so much that people are starting to see me as a monster when I’m really one of the nicest people you can ever meet.”

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The police

Plano police have two detectives assigned solely to Christina’s case — a rarity for the department. Lead detective Robyn Busby goes over the evidence, the witnesses and any new leads that come up. Investigator Kevin Sasso, meanwhile, continues to search for Christina.

Every time a story appears in the media, the tip line lights up. None of the information so far has amounted to much. A few psychics have even contacted police. “They have these visions of this or that,” police spokesman David Tilley said, like seeing a water tower with a pond nearby. Every tip gets checked.

“We can’t just toss any of these things aside,” he said.

Tilley said the substantial amount of DNA in the Camaro’s trunk typically would indicate Christina was there unwillingly. The kidnapping charge is one that investigators think they can prove.

What about a murder charge? “We don’t know she’s been murdered,” Tilley said.

Cases around the country offer a reason to hope. Fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart was found alive nine months after being kidnapped from her bedroom in Salt Lake City in 2002. And then there is the story of three young Cleveland women kidnapped by the same man between 2002 and 2004. They were rescued in May 2013.

David Morris holds a protest sign outside the Collin County Detention Center in hopes of learning where his granddaughter is. (G.J. McCarthy/Staff Photographer)

The searchers

In the days after Christina was reported missing, Texas Equusearch set up base camp at Plano’s Legacy Church and coordinated volunteers searching by ground and later by drone.

The group suspended its formal efforts within a week or so. But the search for Christina continues with volunteers. Scores turned out in the early days. Numbers dwindled as time wore on.

Still, a dedicated bunch meets at 8 a.m. every Saturday at Allen High School. This time of year, greetings are swapped along with bug spray to thwart the chiggers, ticks and mosquitoes.

“It’s that feeling of total paralysis, that panic when you can’t put your eyes on your child.” — Anna Morris

Michael Ainsworth/Staff Photographer

Most of them started out as strangers. Their reasons for getting involved vary, but their commitment does not waver. They’ve become family.

Robert O’Neil is looking to pay it forward for all the volunteers who searched for his missing niece more than a decade ago. Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson disappeared from her Farmersville home one night in March 2004.

She was found days later in far eastern Collin County, strangled and stabbed, her body severely burned. Her killer, Moises Sandoval Mendoza, remains on Texas’ death row.

“Everything we go through in this case brings back hard memories,” O’Neil said.

Stacey Blair wants Christina’s family to know there are people they can count on in the face of tragedy. Blair lost her husband to a drunken driver years ago. She was grateful for the people who stepped up to offer their support. But it didn’t last.

“People do go back to their lives,” she said.

And Dennis Abercrombie feels inextricably drawn to help those desperate for answers.

“This was too close to home,” said Abercrombie, a Van Alstyne man who works as an electrician and has two grown children. “This could be any of our kids. That’s the scary part.”

This photo marks the last time that Jonni McElroy saw her daughter. They were celebrating Christina's 23rd birthday on July 25, 2014. (G.J. McCarthy/Staff Photographer)

The search areas

The volunteers coordinate with Plano police to determine where to search. Sometimes it’s a field or a wooded area. They look along the banks of creeks and under bridges. Places close to a road seem most likely. But abandoned buildings get searched too.

On a recent Saturday, Mark Morris led a group searching for his daughter. They used walking sticks to part the chest-high weeds, surveying the ground as they walked. The tree line gets a closer look as well. It’s tedious work in triple-digit heat.

Morris pauses, then shakes his head. It doesn’t feel right. The group moves to the next spot on the map.

Each week they cross more areas off the list. The good news is that they haven’t found any evidence of Christina’s death. The bad news is that they haven’t found any evidence at all.

Mark Morris, right, takes time out of the protest at the Collin County Detention Center to tell Ted Lindwall about his missing daughter. (G.J. McCarthy/Staff Photographer)

The first anniversary

The first anniversary is another chance to get the word out, said Tilley of the Plano police.

“Somebody out there knows something,” he said.

On a recent Friday, McElroy and grandparents David and Linda Morris headed to the Shops at Legacy to hang posters about a personal safety seminar and remind people that a beautiful young woman is still missing.

As they get ready to start, a vehicle pulls out of the space in the garage where Christina’s Celica was abandoned. They step into the space, hold hands and say a prayer.

Then they get to work, taping fliers on cement pillars and light poles.

Emotions get the better of McElroy, who dreads returning to what may be the scene of a crime. “It makes no sense,” she said. “I just want her home.”

A few deep breaths and she’s back to hanging posters. She stops in several businesses to ask that they post the fliers in a window and spread the word.

“She can’t be forgotten. She still needs a voice,” McElroy said.

At one point they find a “MISSING” poster faded and worn on a light pole. It’s yet another reminder of how much time has passed without answers.

Mom Jonni McElroy and grandparents David and Linda Morris say a prayer in the parking space where Christina's car was found. (Michael Ainsworth/Staff Photographer)

Suspect targeted

The family wants justice. But even more, they want answers. And they’ve targeted the man they believe has them.

Within weeks of Christina’s disappearance, family-led protests started outside the home in Allen where Arochi lived with his parents and brother. When the Arochi family recently moved to Plano, so did the protesters.

After Arochi’s arrest, they added protests at the Collin County Detention Center.

“We hope to convince his parents to convince him to tell us where Christina is,” said Linda Morris, whose handwritten sign is one of the kinder ones. Its large block letters read: “Tell us where is our granddaughter.”

His family doesn’t always come. And when they do, they don’t talk to the Morris family.

“They have never said they are sorry or sympathize with us,” Linda Morris said.

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Letters to her daughter

McElroy writes letters daily to her daughter. The notes on Facebook are like bread crumbs, meant to guide a lost girl home.

“Please come home, sweet girl! You’re missed more than you’ll ever know and by people you’ve never even met.”

Jonni McElroy breaks down in the parking garage where her daughter disappeared. (Michael Ainsworth/Staff Photographer)

She holds tight to her memories, envisioning all that they have yet to do together — long talks and lunch dates. Skateboarding on the riverside. And every mother’s dream: “I want to be a grandma one day and watch my first grandchild grow in your Tum Tum,” she writes.

Christina’s 24th birthday came and went on July 25 with no news of her whereabouts.

“This fight will never be over until you are home and justice is served to the fullest,” McElroy writes one day.

But she can only bear so much. And utter despair sometimes takes over.

“I am trying to stay so strong,” she writes, “and the more days that pass, the weaker my heart gets …